Another Super Tuesday Another Day that Won’t help the Markets
This week we can expect yet another ‘Super Tuesday’. The only people these Super Tuesdays are helping is the 24 hour news channels. For Americans and the economy however, they are stretching out the political cycle and increasing the amount of angst and risk for investors. That is not all of the problem, but definitely a component in keeping prices at the pump high and keeping investors on their toes as they try and determine whether or not Barack Obama would really bomb Pakistan or whether or not both Obama and Clinton were paying lip service to the notion of canning NAFTA with Canada, our closest supplier of oil, or Mexico, our cheapest supplier of labor.
I would not suggest that there is a lot of room for improvement in politics today, but purely looking at this from the investors perspective, a long drawn out political battle with risk is a bad thing for them and they pass that down hill to borrowers in the form of higher interest rates, tighter credit, lower savings rates and more. The economy has a long way to go to heal itself, but if the parties do not get a move on in selecting their candidates we are all going to be looking at a factory job packaging dog supplies for minimum wage with a worthless dollar as a step in the right direction.
